Not Just The Windows To Your Home

The eyes might be the windows to your soul as the saying goes, but the windows of your house are an important part of the decor too.  Doubly so as they serve a very practical purpose: protecting you from the weather and allowing light into your home, but also because they can be a feature in their own right.  Of course glass doesn’t need to be limited to windows (and doors) though, as there are loads of other creative ways you can use it to bring elegance and style into your home.

Toughened glass in particular has lots of uses beyond the simple and obvious: windows and doors.  I really like new and inventive uses for glass, like using glass for balustrades for stairs both internally and externally, and perhaps even better using glass as a balustrade for a balcony.  Glass is such a versatile material and it can accommodate design features and fixing points by way of holes, shapes and rounded corners.  You can help it match and complement your colour scheme by considering whether clear or tinted glass is best for your location and purpose.  Clearly to get a bespoke, quality finish, you need to pick out the right supplier and there are toughened glass suppliers in the UK that can help with your design project, including leading glass manufacturers Tuffx Glass.

In recent years toughened glass balustrades have become an increasingly important part of contemporary home and garden design. Their sleek good looks together with their stand out practical features, mean that glass balustrades can help complement a building’s architecture.   Not only that they let those that live there enjoy natural light and expansive views. To make toughened glass, the glass goes through a process called tempering where the glass is heated to an exceptionally high temperature and then cooled very quickly in a process called quenching. Quenching creates a strong layer on both sides of the glass, so that you get a glass that’s approximately four times stronger to impact than regular glass. If toughened glass does actually break, it doesn’t fragment into large shards, but instead shatters into smaller pieces which are less dangerous.

Using a glass balcony balustrade as part of your overall design will break down visual barriers between your indoor and outside living areas.  This is the perfect choice when you want to provide safety say without hampering a viewpoint.  So you can have a balcony on a patio area say and still be able to see the view beyond from inside your home.  Or you could do the same in a large open space in a barn conversion where you wanted to maintain as much light, openness and space as possible in a full height space with a mezzanine level.  In terms of styling it gives a contemporary finish, but because of its minimalistic good looks a glass balcony should still work well with a lot of period buildings.  It’s great that you can have a item work on so many different levels: a stylish design feature, practical safety feature and an integral part of your home.